The invention relates in general to design tools used to design printed circuit boards (PCB's) and to generate manufacturing files, and more particularly to a system and method to insert new pages with a schematic capture tool.
Since many years, the conception of electronic boards is performed by using CAO systems. These CAO systems are generally composed of three main subsystem tools: the library tool, the schematics capture tool and the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) tool. Among the most well-known CAO systems, one can list CADSTAR from ZUREN REDAC, ORCAD from CADENCE, MENTOR Architect from MENTOR GRAPHICS and Concept from CADENCE. The present invention addresses the schematics capture tool, and more particularly the CADENCE one.
As illustrated on FIG. 1, the CADENCE PCB design tool is made of the following software products:
a ‘PE Librarian Expert’ block 100. This is a library where logical and physical models are stored. A user can create any kind of components;
a ‘Concept HDL Expert’ block 110. This is a schematic editor which allows the user to capture the design schematics. This is the logical design phase;
a ‘Packager-XL’ block 120. This is a bridge between logical design and physical design; and
an ‘Allegro Expert’ block 130. This is a graphic tool for component placement, signal routing and output files block 140 for manufacturing. This is the physical design phase.
The ‘Concept HDL Expert’ tool 110 offers a graphic interface to capture an electronic design. This latter is made of several numbered schematic pages which are saved to disk individually.
To insert one new page between a page (i) and a page (j) out of ‘N’ pages, the current available command requires the user to take the following actions:                (1) Save all pages (j) to (N) as (m+1) pages starting by the end, meaning that current page (N) is saved as new page (N+1), current page (N−1) is saved as new page (N) and so on until page (j) is as page (j+1);        (2) Editing current page (j);        (3) Deleting its content to get the new inserted blank page.        
It's easily understandable that this process is long, time consuming and boring for designs made of hundred of pages as is generally the case. Therefore, there is a real need for a method that allows to easily and rapidly insert new schematic pages when using a schematic capture tool.